After the three of them split up, Liu Ziyi finally managed to calm his mind and observe every blade of grass and tree in the back mountain.
For once, even the air felt refreshed.
After all, as a place rich in spiritual energy, the flora here possessed a degree of sentience, with some even able to understand human speech. They were the descendants of the ancient demon race, though nowadays the demon clan had greatly declined, and very few could be seen anymore.
Liu Ziyi curved his eyes and squatted down to look at a small grass sprite that had scampered up to him.
Liu Ziyi teased the little creature, which was exuding faint wisps of spiritual energy, with a few words: “Little grass, do you know where to find silk-skin bark?”
Compared to a cultivator like himself, spirits that had lived in the back mountain all their lives were naturally more familiar with the environment and could locate the target much faster.
However, if anyone else were to ask such a question right now, even Shen Zhuoqing would likely only provoke the revulsion of the spirits.
In the eyes of the spirits, these hateful righteous cultivators were no different from the demonic disciples who slaughtered their kin.
Fortunately, Liu Ziyi had always been favored by these flowers and plants. Even the century-old tree demon at the Ends of the Earth Inn was happy to let him rest comfortably on its body, leaving behind a wealth of the tree demon’s pure aura on him.
The small grass sprite hopped backward in delight from his teasing, then waved its two tender green shoots.
Liu Ziyi could not speak its language, but he caught a faint sound and guessed that the small grass sprite was leading the way. He lowered his palm again to let the sprite crawl up and tumble about.
The little grass had never seen a hand held so high and spun around gleefully on Liu Ziyi’s palm. Amidst its chirping, Liu Ziyi heard a strange gust of wind rise in the valley, rustling the surrounding spiritual plants.
Liu Ziyi listened with rapt attention to the movement around him.
Was it perhaps greeting its little companions and elders?
Fortunately, this place was winding and deep, and the paths on all sides were densely overgrown. If Shen Zhuoqing had seen him walking so close to the spirits, he would probably have started worrying again.
Noticing that the wind around him had stopped, Liu Ziyi snapped out of his thoughts and tapped the little grass.
“Lead the way, little grass. If we find the silk-skin bark, next time I come back, I will take you along to experience the feeling of flying on a sword.”
With that, the hand he held half-up in front of him imitated the trajectory of sword flight and spun a circle in the air, stirring up another wave of rustling sounds. The small grass sprite on his palm then nodded to him, or rather, its two leaves did.
Following the guidance of the grass all the way, Liu Ziyi wound through the back mountain and finally saw a large tree in the distance tightly wrapped by vines.
The thick tree trunk faintly bore half-raised black patterns like snakes, starting as thick as a rice bowl and narrowing down to the thickness of a strand of hair as they wound into mid-air.
At their ends, they detached from the trunk, cascading down like a waterfall with dense, dark strands resembling the willow trees commonly found by lakes. But more accurately, they looked even more like strands of human hair. They looked quite uninviting, and he did not even want to get close.
“Hmm, it looks almost identical to what is drawn in the herbal compendium. So it really is black.”
Liu Ziyi muttered to himself: “For Uncle Fu’s hair, let us charge together!”
With that, Liu Ziyi raised his hand to signal the grass to take the lead, but when he looked closely, he saw that—
There was no trace of the grass left on his palm!
The little fellow that had been so obediently showing the way had slipped away from his palm at some point and hidden in who knows which patch of grass.
Liu Ziyi had no choice. He put his hands on his hips and frowned in thought: the location of the silk-skin bark was a bit too deep. Although most of the spirits in this back mountain would not harm him, there was no telling if an unexpected situation might arise.
The deeper parts were areas where sunlight rarely reached, yet the spiritual plants grew even more luxuriantly than outside.
As Liu Ziyi ventured deeper, it became almost impossible to move.
The branches and leaves he expected to easily brush aside with his hand turned out to be solid, tightly packed stems and grass leaves when pressed down. Even the lush green spiritual plants around them gradually turned dark purple and black, faintly emitting a pungent, rotting odor.
Fortunately, the spatial storage within the Xiliu sword at his waist still had room. He drew his sword and slashed with a wave of his hand, opening up a path two people wide that had previously been difficult to pass sideways, though the black juice that burst forth the instant the stems and leaves snapped stained his upper garments.
It smelled so bad.
Liu Ziyi wrinkled his nose and looked around, relieved that none of the juices had splashed onto his skin. The fabric stained black by the juices was devoured by the poisonous liquid in an instant, leaving behind numerous holes.
“So there are actually plants here that are not recorded in the herbal compendium.”
Muttering this, Liu Ziyi continued to hack a path open with Xiliu, finally arriving in front of the silk-skin bark a short while later.
Xiliu deftly twirled a few sword flowers in his palm, instantly wiping out the rampant silk-skin bark. The severed parts melted the moment they hit the ground, vanishing completely.
Knowing this was no place to linger, Liu Ziyi turned around to leave after finishing the task, but the surroundings had undergone a complete transformation at some point.
The path two people wide that he had hacked open with his sword had now turned into a wide clearing.
And there was no path back ahead.
Suddenly, a wave of dizziness washed over him.
Rustling sounds came from the forest, and Liu Ziyi felt as though he could hear the chattering dialogue of the spiritual plants, as if they wanted to invade his spiritual consciousness and tear his head into pieces.
Liu Ziyi steadied his temples and took two cautious steps back.
At this moment, a stinging pain flared in his right hand holding the sword. Lowering his gaze, he saw that the skin at the web of his thumb had somehow been scratched by a sharp twig of a spirit plant, and dark red blood flowed down along the web to his fingertips, dripping drop by drop onto Xiliu and causing the sword to emit a few mournful whimpers from time to time.
Liu Ziyi’s palm trembled slightly, and he forced back the pain to project his spiritual sense and test the waters.
“An illusion?”
Liu Ziyi gripped Xiliu tightly, but the wound compressed by the sword hilt sent a bone-deep, stabbing pain through him. All of this indicated that what he had encountered was not an illusion, but rather that these spirits had genuinely shifted their positions and blocked the original path!
The surroundings were so quiet that Liu Ziyi could almost hear his own breathing growing heavier from the pain.
A swordsman’s most treasured asset was his wielding hand, especially sensitive areas like the web of the thumb that required prolonged friction and contact with the sword hilt. Gripping it tightly meant tearing the wound open repeatedly.
Yet the rustling sound reached Liu Ziyi’s ears once again. Whether it was the pain blurring his consciousness or the fact that the spiritual plant was indeed toxic—
As Liu Ziyi cautiously scanned his surroundings, he unexpectedly managed to understand the words of those spiritual plants:
“He killed Zhuoqing!”
“Do not let him leave! Kill him!”
“But he has the aura of our kind on him. He is also a demon!”
“Zhuoqing, wuwu, my child.”
Liu Ziyi pursed his lips, keeping his expression neutral as he continued to look around. However, the stinging pain from his palm gradually grew numb, replaced by an unbearable wave of fatigue and drowsiness. He only felt as though his heartbeat was slowing down accordingly, and any words he heard afterward failed to form coherent thoughts in his mind.
The fragmented sentences sounded noisy, yet they were also tearing at Liu Ziyi’s sanity.
His breathing grew heavier. Clearly, cultivators were much more dull to perceptions of hot and cold, yet he had broken out in a hot sweat.
He could not stay here any longer; he had to get out quickly.
A chill crept up the back of Liu Ziyi’s neck. He raised Xiliu and slashed toward the nearest spiritual plant. Spiritual light sprayed outward along with the blood, and the conscious spiritual plants instinctively dodged the strike, clearing a path for Liu Ziyi.
At this moment, the shouting and clamoring of the other spiritual plants reached Liu Ziyi’s ears once more:
“He will kill us!”
“Do not let him leave, this is our territory!”
The scene before Liu Ziyi’s eyes began to grow dim and blurry, spinning out of control as he lost his balance. He had no choice but to stab Xiliu down into the soil before him to steady his body. His right hand, burning with the excruciating pain inflicted by the poison, tore open further as he stubbornly tightened his grip on the sword hilt, splitting the wound along the meridians until it was a bloody mess.
Damn it, this was not his first time coming to the back mountain.
Yet he had never seen such a bizarre place.
Thinking this, Liu Ziyi managed to pry his eyelids open with great difficulty, only to see that the sole ray of light before him had been completely blocked by the surrounding spiritual plants. Those dark, clamoring spirit plants finally revealed their truly ferocious nature, swarming toward him like a pack of wolves rushing upon their prey.
He would not just die here, right?
With this thought, Liu Ziyi used his last ounce of strength to pull his sword from the soil, gripping Xiliu tightly in his hand.
The moment his vision went black, a flash of sword light cut through.
The sound of the blade was accompanied by ringing bells, sounding a note with every single step and movement.
Before Liu Ziyi lost consciousness, the last thing he heard was the sound of spiritual plants being chopped apart and bursting with juice.
That figure arrived before the unconscious Liu Ziyi, knelt down, and picked Liu Ziyi up in his arms.
When he departed, the surrounding spiritual plants no longer stirred up the commotion they had moments before.
Everything was as dead as silence, save for the ceaseless ringing of the bells.